Half of the 16 U.S. metro areas where the economy grew at a 6% rate or better last year were in Texas, led by the energy-rich Midland region’s 24.1% advance in gross domestic product, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. . . Among the metro areas with the 25 largest economies, Dallas was the leader, followed by San Jose, Calif., up 6.7% and San Francisco, up 5.2%.
Federal data indicates Californians paid $171 billion in higher costs for power over the last 20 years, compared to the national average. For perspective, this works out to roughly $12,300 per household, but bear in mind the total includes residential, industrial, commercial and government usage.
The California unemployment rate fell to 6.1% in August from 6.2% the previous month — the lowest level since January 2008 — while employers added a healthy 36,200 net new jobs.
In coming years, the new legislation means California’s homes and buildings are expected to use dramatically less electricity and the power grid will increase its share of renewable energy. Brown also hopes to achieve much of what the Legislature rejected through executive orders and regulations. That will mean more electric cars on the road and increased use of biofuels, as part of a far-reaching effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
Applications for unemployment benefits decreased by 11,000 to 264,000 in the week ended Sept. 12, a Labor Department report showed Thursday in Washington. The survey period included the Labor Day holiday. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected claims would hold at 275,000.
California will have more than 1.4 million STEM jobs by 2022, having gained 200,000 in employment, more than any other state. Other large increases in the nation during this period include Texas at 160,000 STEM jobs, and Florida, Illinois, and Virginia at between 40,000 to 60,000 jobs each.
As ExxonMobil works to increase production at its explosion-damaged Torrance refinery and ease stubbornly high local gas prices, some residents of the South Bay city told their City Council this week that they want the refinery to address safety issues, the Daily Breeze reports. Meanwhile, air-quality regulators have once again postponed a hearing over whether the refinery should be allowed to ramp up fuel productions using outdated pollution controls in place of updated equipment damaged in the refinery explosion in February.
in the delivery of specialized services such as technical consulting. In California, 775,000 jobs were supported by goods-related exports and 85 percent of these jobs were in manufacturing.
In coming years, the new legislation means California’s homes and buildings are expected to use dramatically less electricity and the power grid will increase its share of renewable energy. Brown also hopes to achieve much of what the Legislature rejected through executive orders and regulations. That will mean more electric cars on the road and increased use of biofuels, as part of a far-reaching effort to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
One irony is that wildfires diminish the impact of California’s anti-carbon policies. In 2007 environmental scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder found that “a severe fire season lasting only one or two months can release as much carbon as the annual emissions from the entire transportation or energy sector of an individual state.” NCAR’s Christine Wiedinmyer estimated that southern California fires that burned for one week produced as much carbon dioxide as a quarter of the state’s monthly fossil-fuel emissions.
The lack of change shows that the progress in the U.S. job market—in 2014 the economy added 2.6 million jobs, the most in more than a decade—have remained insufficient to lift the fortunes of the nearly 47 million people living in poverty.
The official definition has changed little since its adoption 50 years ago, when its threshold was set as cash income equal to three times what a frugal family spent on food. A relatively new unofficial rate is based on a much wider definition of income, including the earned-income tax credit and noncash subsidies for housing, school lunch and home heating. It also adjusts income for taxes, child care, health insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs. The unofficial rate also reflects regional costs of living with different thresholds for renters and people with mortgages.
Tax and transfer programs can create significant bonuses and penalties for low- and moderate-income cohabiters with children. We find that federal tax laws can create marriage penalties that reach almost 10 percent of earnings for our hypothetical couples earning $40,000 or $50,000 a year. In contrast, a prototypical couple earning $20,000 a year could receive a marriage bonus in excess of 10 percent of earnings. Because the transfer programs we consider largely treat cohabiting parents the same as married couples, they create neither significant marriage penalties nor bonuses; however, there may be instances in which couples are misclassified and receive transfer benefits as separate households when cohabiting which could lead to marriage penalties from those programs.
This analysis addresses the growing problem of marriage penalties created by the increased size and coverage of means-tested social-welfare benefits. Depending on the relationship between cohabiters (whether or not they have children in common and whether or not they share food or utility expenses) and their combined and relative earnings, getting married can result in bonuses of as much as 11 percent of their combined income or penalties of more than about 32 percent of their combined income.
The proposed tax increase would generate an estimated $7 billion to $9 billion a year, and run though 2030. The group filing the measure includes the California Teachers Association, other education labor groups, and health care and police unions.
